


John, Awake

by crazyjane



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: M/M, if you squint you can see it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-30
Updated: 2014-04-30
Packaged: 2018-01-21 08:51:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 767
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1544885
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crazyjane/pseuds/crazyjane
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>Post-traumatic stress. Flat affect, resistance to engagement with civilian life. Possible suicide or self-harm risk. Suggest narrative therapy?</i> His life, reduced to four jargon-laden sentences.</p>
<p>Inside John's head, thinking about life, therapy and Sherlock. A companion piece to <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/1544864">Sherlock, Introspective</a>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	John, Awake

In the last few months, he'd become adept at reading upside-down. It helped that his therapist has the kind of careful, rounded writing more suited to a receptionist writing phone messages than a medical professional. She knew he was doing it, and tried to angle the writing pad so that he couldn't see the page clearly. Sooner or later, though, she’d forget, and drop the pad on her knee when she leant forward to make a point. That was when he could read what she tried to dress up with trained empathy when she talked to him.

_Post-traumatic stress. Flat affect, resistance to engagement with civilian life. Possible suicide or self-harm risk. Suggest narrative therapy?_ His life, reduced to four jargon-laden sentences.

She’s tried to get him to talk. He’s blocked her with short, noncommittal answers because he doesn't need to open up, and even if he did, it couldn't be to her. She's exactly the wrong kind of person; she looks at him through her lens of 'normal human behaviour' and sees someone struggling to become part of that life. Someone who needs her help to relax and take his place in society again.

She doesn't see him at all. 

He offered her a sop, now and then, just enough to comply with the rules. His discharge on medical grounds is dependent on these sessions, and he doesn't want to draw attention to himself by being a difficult patient. More than that, though, he found that he didn't want to see that fear in her eyes, that look that betrays just how much she thinks she's failing him. So even though she can't understand, he still takes her advice occasionally.

The blog was her idea, but he simply couldn't find anything to write about at first. The dreams are entirely private - and apart from them, what else would there have been? Every day the same. Awake 22 hours out of every day. Coffee and an apple for breakfast, a single corned beef sandwich for tea - if he remembered. Tidying that colourless room - a task that took about ten minutes of his time. Exercises to stretch and strengthen his leg. 

Going through the motions.

Other than that, hours and hours of simply holding himself still. He taught himself to do that, too, and it kept him together far better than any therapy. Without it, he would simply have receded. There was a clinical name for it, he knew, but he preferred the way they referred to it over there - gone away.

_Shape without form, shade without colour,  
Paralysed force, gesture without motion._

Hollow man.

Another day, a chance meeting in a park, following along in the wake of an old schoolmate whose name he could barely remember, passive, accepting, to meet this man, this difficult man in search of someone to share his flat. Not caring who or what he was agreeing to - just a slight variation in routine, that was all. Mildly troubled by how quickly he was disassembled, reduced, _read_. Enough to make him curious, but not expecting anything.

And then that casual offer (but not so casual, not really, he knows, he knew it even then); come with me, come back into that world you left, under the skin of everyday into horror. And his instinctive response, shocked out of him, _oh God yes_ , because right then Sherlock had just reached into him and ripped away all the clinging, muffling fog.

_Awake._

From that moment, it feels like he hasn't stopped moving, has barely paused to draw breath. He can feel his heart hammering when he runs, now - and he _does_ run, no more of that halting limp that seemed to have become a part of him. His hands are steady almost all the time. And he finds he is always, always watching, because Sherlock never does. For a man who sees so much, the detective can be remarkably unobservant. In pursuit of a case, he becomes so blinkered that he can walk straight into danger without realising. John knows that if he didn't watch out for him, Sherlock would likely be dead in a ridiculously short amount of time. So, self-appointed guardian, he stands watch and puts himself between Sherlock's curiosity and its inevitable endpoint. 

So he followed, and he is still following, despite the tantrums, and the body parts in the fridge, and the way he seems sometimes to be little more than an audience to appreciate Sherlock's brilliance. He follows because he knows what Sherlock can't acknowledge - that they need each other. That without each other, they are only half alive.


End file.
